The Mustang

The Mustang is an earnest, well-meaning drama that highlights the relationship between a prisoner and a wild horse. Of course the prisoner sees something of himself in the animal, and the relationship changes him.

The film was directed and co-written by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, in her debut. It has signs of a debut, as there a few too many cliches and predictable plot signs (I knew one character was a goner as soon as he was introduced). But fine acting, particularly by Matthias Schoenaerts, as the convict, make The Mustang worth watching.

Schoenaerts has been transferred to a prison in Nevada where he is introduced into the general population. He is unresponsive to a case worker (Connie Britton) and has no interest in his pregnant daughter (Gideon Adlon). The prison has a program where convicts train wild horses so they can be auctioned off, usually to law enforcement agencies. Schoenaerts, working maintenance (mainly shoveling horse shit) is drawn to a particularly wild horse.

He gets into the progam, overseen by Bruce Dern. The bond between he and the horse, which he names Marquis, improves him. He gives a tearful apology to his daughter, where we learn his crime was killing her mother (Schoenaerts is brilliant in this scene). But his cellmate demands he steal Ketamine for him--this plot point creates a huge hole in the movie, as Schoenaerts attempts to end this but seemingly is not punished for it. 

The film gives information about wild horses--they are all over the Southwest, but too many are a nuisance, and are rounded up periodically. I've interacted with them in a place not too far from Las Vegas, where I live. The ones I saw were very tame, probably learning to beg for food from humans. The comparisons between the horses and convicts are many, but Clermont-Tonnere at times forces the issue.

Still, not a bad film, and one that horse lovers would enjoy, and perhaps shed a tear or two at.